Poems of the Diaspora

My name is a refugeeFrom Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa,But I have no ideaWhat these places are like.My grandparents told me,You chased them out of thereWith an airstrike.I don’t remember yourorange trees.I’ve never put a toe in yourBeautiful sea.I have never even enteredMy own home,So for it,I dedicate this poem.My grandmother holds theHouse key.To go back home is her plea.My grandfather remembersEvery bit.Before his voice starts shaking,He bites his lip.They no longer live in theHouse they built.They wonder if the people that took itFeel an ounce of guilt.As for us,We became a statistic,In one of those “resolution plans”That is a book thick.And although I have livedNowhere else,I feel like I could’ve beenSomeone else.But my name,Since 1948,Is a refugeeThat doesn’t want to hate.

When my grandparents are gone,They’ll leave me their keyThat they so desperately holdOn,And I’ll be hereSearching for an identity,Something that isn’t an entity.But I won’t be naïveTo think someone will take me back.All I want is for someone to remember my name.So will you remember my name?

The Borders Where Time Stopped

Where did the time stop?At the crossing of borders, I presume.Was it when I stuckThe yellow stickers on my three bagsFilled with memories, za’atar,And my favorite childhood chocolate,Ali Baba?Was it at the borderWhere they’d tell me to forgetwhat I left behindAnd that I must bid farewell to Israel?They hoped I had a wonderful visit –As if my home was a vacation spot.Was it at the borderWhere you took my identity card to check….another background check?Was it at the borderwhen the mosque was callingFor the morning prayerAnd my family was returning without meTo the land that can never leave me?I will never be sure.The watch forever reads: 4:01:18.I will never be sure if it wasAM or PM,If it was the early morning in the airportOr the minute I arrived to a placethat doesn’t want to understand me.Did time stop at the crossing of borders?Did it stop to remind me what I leftAnd would return to?

The Syllables That Come After

“You’re from Pa-,”Pa-Pa-Pause.Not sure if you should end with“-kistan” or the other one;the one textbook maps ignore,the one that isthe reason you’ll draw an arrowand write, “free Palestine!”,the one why they warn you,with a white sticker to not “destroy school’s property”And they’ll never know you came from destroyed property.Pa-Pa-It’s too heavy a syllable,too conflicted like the next twothat come after.“Pakistan?” Pause.

“I’m from the end of the hyphenation,but originally, I’m-,”Pa-Pa-Pause.How do you introduce yourself?Being from here and not quite from here?Being from a land whose borders have beenDrawn and erased…cut and misplaced?You know who you are, but how do you explain it?How do you claim it?Pause.

Hasheemah Afaneh is a Palestinian-American currently based in the United States. She is a Birzeit University alumnus. She has written for the Huffington Post, Fair Observer, Riwayya, This Week in Palestine, and Sixteen Minutes to Palestine among others. She blogs at norestrictionsonwords.wordpress.com.

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The Mediterranean Sea has become a harrowing gauntlet for hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants each year. Through the intimacy and immediacy of fiction, poetry, photography and reportage, MEDITERRANEAN explores these turbulent journeys. Featuring Edwidge Danticat, Boris Boubacar Diop, Maaza Mengiste, Chika Unigwe, Hassan Ghedi Santur, Mario Badagliacca, Jehan Bseiso and many other talented writers and artists

An affecting, clear-eyed and brutally honest account of the refugee crisis. -Nadifa Mohamed, author of Black Mamba Boy and The Orchard of Lost Souls.

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